Click

dir: Frank Coraci
[img_assist|nid=861|title=Click is as good as it gets for you, shmuck|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=300|height=446]
Watching an Adam Sandler flick that isn’t as painful as his other movies is a joy to the world. It’s like being in a car crash where people are painfully hurt instead of permanently crippled or killed. If you can walk away from it, then it wasn’t that bad.

Click is, in the peak of what I could ever get to say about an Adam Sandler flick, the least painful or objectionable of Sandler’s flicks thus far, with the exception of Happy Gilmore and Punch-Drunk Love. In that sense, this means Sandler has hopefully reached the pinnacle of his endeavours, and will soon retire.

I don’t need to tell those of you living in downtown Kandahar, Beirut or Brunswick that this is an imperfect world. And, in such a world, what should happen (like Sandler, Jim Carrey and the Hilton mutants dying in a car crash) rarely does. So retirement seems even less likely. Life can be so unfair.

All the same, imagine if someone handed you a magical item, in this case a remote, which could give you the kind of control over your life that a remote control has over a DVD player. Imagine if your life had an audio commentary, dutifully supplied by James Earl Jones, better known as the Voice of Darth Vader. Imagine being able to be deeply traumatised by watching the Making Of… special of your life as one of the ‘special features’.

Imagine if you could rewind to review some of the trickier parts, or fast-forward through the boring bits, like arguments with your significant other, your children’s sporting endeavours or foreplay. It sounds like a god-sent gift. And in the hands of a sensible person, maybe it could be used for good, evil or greater entertaining evil.

But in the hands of Sandler’s character Michael Newman, this magical remote control is meant to do for him what the angel in It’s a Wonderful Life does for George Bailey, or Dicken’s ghosts do for miserly Scrooge. In other words: What worth has a life when you miss the best and worst parts of it?

Michael is a workaholic architect who wisely avoids spending too much time with his ungrateful family by throwing himself into his work. Whenever a conflict between a work priority and his family comes up, he goes with work as his first preference.

Good man. The US was built on the backs of such men. Men who leave the rearing of children to the womenfolk. Men who would rather chat with their idiotic bosses from hell (in this case played by that hideous pop culture demon David Hasselhoff) than talk to their families. Men who power through sex like foreplay is the dirty word because they want to get back to their work or sports.

It is these men who both build the corporations that magnify economies and lead to prosperity for some, and who provide large houses, an abundance of useless appliances and 4WDs for their indolent families.

Where’s their parade? Where’s their medal? Who appreciates their sacrifice in these modern times? Who respects the man who works 100-hour weeks and who barely remembers his children’s names as he slimes his way up the corporate ladder?

Not Hollywood, clearly. They’ve always got it in for that Judeo-Christian work ethic, those darned Californicators.

Still, as protagonists go, Sandler’s Michael is essentially the same as every other character he’s ever played except that he’s older. He’s just as immature and violent, it’s just that now he’s in his late 30s - early 40s. Before, the premise in his flicks would revolve around an immature man-child having to grow up and take responsibility for, I dunno, the ozone layer or something.

Here, the character is already responsible. He doesn’t have to “grow up”. The problem is that he’s too responsible in terms of his work, and ends up neglecting his family with disastrous consequences.

You can argue that the high concept premise is too idiotic to make the film relatable or even tolerable, but hey, it’s just a plot device. And the delivery of the plot device, in the form of a universal remote ably provided by the always odd Christopher Walken, is entertaining enough in and of itself.

Seriously, the ‘magical’ nature of the plot device is only slightly less ridiculous than the same activities or alternate pathways being represented by angels, gods or ghosts. That’s hardly reasonable grounds to dismiss such a flick outright.

No matter how Sandler ages, the obligation upon him to retain his grasp on crude humour doesn’t change. Whilst there are a bunch of decent gags, there are some that make you scratch your head in wonderment. There’s one fart gag in particular that doesn’t work, not because it’s a fart gag, but because it’s just so goddamn stupid. And the Hoff’s follow up to it kills any humour that may have lingered around like a silent but deadly fart in a co-worker’s office.

There are some laughs, and it’s even surprisingly touching in other parts. As Michael’s path meanders on, he accumulates tremendous regrets as he finds out, after the fact, about moments important in the lives of his family that he has missed and cannot return to. The universal remote possesses a feature which starts making choices for Michael based on his past choices. These choices dictate how little of his own life with his family he will now get to live through.

Sue me: it managed to be surprisingly poignant in parts, even if it is often wrapped up in the usual aging fratboy nonsense and sentimentality that is Sandler’s trademark. Kate Beckinsale plays his long-suffering wife, and she manages to bring the same lack of charisma and presence to this flick that she does to everything else she does. Henry Winkler, the ancient Fonz, and Julie Kavner, better known as the voice of Marge Simpson, have decent cameos as Michael’s parents. And Hasselhoff is the same strange dweeb he always is. They all paddle around within this treacly melange of mawkish sentimentality, but Sandler finds enough ways to make it less cloying, which is his art.

A flick like this isn’t about the acting. If you like, or can stand Sandler, then Click could be a tolerable and, dare I say it, sweet way to spend and hour and a half. If you can’t stand Sandler, and wish him, his family and his neighbours could be sacrificed to some goat god, then Click is unlikely to change your mind. After all, as I said in the beginning, at best the film is like being involved in a car crash and not dying.

High praise indeed :)

6 out of 10
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News Reader in 2017: “Michael Jackson, the first man to clone himself is now suing himself for molesting himself.” - Click